Post office openings and closings

BY PASHA FARMANARA | The West Village post office scene has been rather chaotic lately. First, the West Village Station Post Office closed after a car crashed into it, and only recently reopened. Now, the Patchin Station Post Office has temporarily closed.

On Mon., Oct. 21. a car stuck the West Village Station, at 527 Hudson St., putting it out of commission until the building was repaired and safe to reoccupy. Despite reports saying the P.O. would be back open for the Christmas rush, it didn’t come back online until Jan. 18.

The Hudson St. branch is fully functional and open for business, but as shown by a crack in the storefront’s window, there are still a few fixes left.

“The dust is still settling,” a clerk there said this week. “There are still things that need to be fixed, but we are making good headway.”

The public enthusiastically greeted the branch’s reopening, as indicated by a sign posted outside its door.

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Our post offices play a vital role for people who cannot afford private mail options. Many depend on them for their contact with the outside. They are community resources embedded in our neighborhoods.

The OIG (Office of the Inspector General) proposed a way to keep this vital function while offering much needed services especially to financially strapped customers. Senator Warren has concurred.

The statistics are outrageous:
– More than a quarter of all US households (68 million Americans or so) spend about $89 billion (2012) on interest and fees for non-bank financial services (payday loans, check cashing) – an average of $2,412 per household.
– Poor Americans spend roughly 10% of their income on basic banking services.
– Many banks offered, in essence, payday loans -with annual interest rates of more than 300 percent.

With this plan, in addition to selling stamps and processing mail, the PO would offer prepaid cards — allowing users to pay bills online and withdraw money at ATMs. Check cashing, small international money transfers, small loans, and bill paying. The PO would also develop services to let customers save and borrow money.

The OIG isn't saying the USPS will become a bank. In fact, these services would merely use the USPS's already in place network to complement what banks do and go where banks can't go.

But Banks object. They make money off of low-income Americans.
The median overdraft charge is $34 at large banks and $30 at smaller financial institutions. Banks make an estimated $32 billion in overdraft fees in 2012. And walk-in customers as an easy source of sales: from auto loans to high-cost, lousy, mutual funds.

Other countries have done this, and the OIG says that if even 10% of what underserved Americans pay on interest and fees went to the USPS it would generate $8.9 billion in new revenue per year.
Maybe it's time to put these services into the public's realm and out of profit driven bankers hands?

Please post updates on the reopening of Patchin Place PO. It is shocking that the officials in charge of this branch are being so uncommunicative to the public about what is going on there, a service which Villagers have depended on for their postal needs. The mobile unit has the oddest hours, which are not posted. The signs on the PO door are completely unofficial and in a childish scrawl and have no specifics about what is occurring there and when it is projected to reopen. Is this a federal facility or what? I for one would love to rely on it and feel that it is a shared public space, like our libraries, in which the citizens have a claim. I do not appreciate or understand the attitude of the employees there toward the public, and their sullen lack of specifics and communication. Do an interview with someone there or something. The local press also has an obligation here to report on this.